The Big Benford Show

About a week and a half ago, my dad tells me he needs a new video card. I’m still not sure exactly why he needs one — the reason has escaped me in this adventure I’m about to tell. Well, I agreed to help him find the video card at Fry’s and install it. How hard could this be? I’ve built my own computer (with some friend walking me through as I find the one different place I get stuck in each time) and installed network cards and other parts in others! We go to Fry’s and find the card that fits his price range and need. The one thing I didn’t notice until we got home was that it was a PCI card, but once I thought about it, I realized it shouldn’t make too big of a difference.

So, Sunday, I went to install it only to find that my dad has already done most of the work. He’s an electrical engineer and I remember he told me about building IBM Compatibles back before they were penned “PCs”. He did exactly what needed to be done but the computer just wasn’t booting up all the way. I sat down and went into the BIOS to find that there were a few options I could logically change so that it should make the thing work. Except, the computer kept freezing on me. Ok, go to the manual for the new card. Maybe it will tell me what’s wrong. Not enough juice in the power supply. It stuck in my head but I disregarded it because I figured if the power supply was below the recommended 350 watts, the whole computer just wouldn’t work correctly with the components it had in it. Continued to troubleshoot but to no avail. Windows just wouldn’t load up, even in safe mode. My next idea was to install from CD but we didn’t have a Windows CD at his house.

Hmmm…who could help me? Ah hah! Krez!!! Left him a message but I was out of time to work on the computer for that night. I had to meet Allison to see “Chicago”!

Okay, so Tuesday, I go back to the house to finish this thing up, only to find that the power supply is only 250 Watts! Who would have thunk it? AND, the stores we try in South Austin (and they check with their other stores) and there are NO 350-400 Watt power supplies to be found within our price range ($40-50). It’s like the milk & bananas last week. A run on computer power supplies!!!

Today, I go to Frys and find a power supply — the right wattage and price! I’ve installed it and my problems are still not going away!!! Grrr…. Technology! *rolls eyes* I’ll figure this out. I just need some time & patience. I wasn’t going to find that today, that’s for sure. I’m just beat today.

As my friend Tom says, I’m going through all the emotional stages of this break-up! Here’s the perfect song to express where I am today:

I WILL SURVIVE
as sung by Gloria Gaynor

First I was afraid
I was petrified
Kept thinking I could never live
without you by my side
But I spent so many nights
thinking how you did me wrong
I grew strong
I learned how to carry on
and so you’re back
from outer space
I just walked in to find you here
with that sad look upon your face
I should have changed my stupid lock
I should have made you leave your key
If I had known for just one second
you’d be back to bother me

Go on now go walk out the door
just turn around now
’cause you’re not welcome anymore
weren’t you the one who tried to hurt me with goodbye
you think I’d crumble
you think I’d lay down and die
Oh no, not I
I will survive
as long as i know how to love
I know I will stay alive
I’ve got all my life to live
I’ve got all my love to give
and I’ll survive
I will survive

It took all the strength I had
not to fall apart
kept trying hard to mend
the pieces of my broken heart
and I spent oh so many nights
just feeling sorry for myself
I used to cry
Now I hold my head up high
and you see me
somebody new
I’m not that chained up little person
still in love with you
and so you felt like dropping in
and just expect me to be free
now I’m saving all my loving
for someone who’s loving me

—————————————————-
Have I mentioned how awesome my friends (who are really more like family) have been through all this? Cathy, Skip, Brian & Kelly, Matt, Kristina, Frank, Ken, Connie & her brother Saucy Joe, Tom, Kelly, Trish, my mom & dad…the list goes on. How would I have gotten through any of this without your daily vigil? I’m so blessed! Thanks!

Len and I are done. For real and forever. This should be the last post you’ll hear about any of this. I never thought someone could fake being wonderful for so long. I guess I should have seen the signs. It’s amazing HOW blinding love is!

Len was online on Thursday night so I decided I’d check to see how things were in Houston. I IMed him and we chatted for a while. We went through the whole “I love you, I miss you” song and dance. I can only vouch for myself and I meant it when I said it. But I couldn’t be with him because of the pain I was feeling. I told him I used to feel like family to him for a long time. My family & I treated him like family from the time he & I started talking about getting married. He said I was never family to him. He told me how he wanted to have a relationship like his parents had. To honor them. I told him that their relationship probably wasn’t smooth sailing the whole way through. He told me we weren’t them. But honestly, we’re not. There’s no way that anyone else could be. That’s why we’re all created uniquely. So we can live our own lives, our own way.

Anyways, he asked me why I wanted to be with him. I told him:

because when we met, I fell in love with this kind, caring, giving man who seemed ready for an adult relationship that could last a lifetime. You were willing to see life from not only your eyes, but from mine as well.

I’m done walking on egg shells. I feel like he’s selfish. He’s in this for himself, not for anyone else. I can’t live like that. I told him I wanted to stop pussy footing around. I told him that I was tired of him telling me what he wanted, without really telling me what he wanted. I was tired of all the fluff. We went back and forth…I feel like I was talking about details, I think he felt like I was nit picking at details. That’s all he kept bringing up.

This was the final straw for me:

Len: want me to stop pussy footing?
Cathy: absolutely
Len: I want you to loose weight
Len: i’m not finding it sexy
Len: and I so much loved it like before when you were’n
Len: t weren’t heavier
Cathy: I’ve weighed the same since we met
Len: NO
Len: you haven’t
Len: I’ll show you the photos
Len: STOP
Cathy: according to the scale, I’ve weighed 141 this whole time
Len: NO
Len: when you want to listen… i’ll tell you
Len: until then.. i’ll leave
Cathy: what’s going to happen when your wife has a child?
Cathy: or is PREGNANT?
Cathy: can you handle the size then?
Len: she’ll looose the weight afterwaqrds
Cathy: have fun in your world
Len: you don’t want to look good for me?
Cathy: I like the way i look, thank you
Cathy: for me
Len: I fucking workout for myself and you
Len: i don’t think that it’s an exuse for not keepiong in shape
Len: for my wife
Len: or so that I feel sexy for her
Cathy: wow
Cathy: I tried to tell myself you weren’t really that obsessed with the outside
Cathy: but maybe I was wrong
Cathy: in all those things I said I loved about you, did looks have anything to do with it?
Len: maybe you just don’t want to do anything else for the sake of your marriage
Len: you were attracted to me by looks first
Len: not by who I was
Cathy: actually, no
Len: i knew you were going to say that
Cathy: I was attracted to you because of what you said on Eric’s blog
Cathy: then don’t fucking put words into my mouth
Len: I was rong
Len: and I am not for you cathy
Len: i am just some “regular” guy
Len: and i am just superficial
Len: and a pig
Len: a greedy body mongering hord
Len: i’m a punch
Cathy: you just told me that you aren’t attracted to me because of what I look like and you don’t think you’re superficial
Cathy: you had the NERVE to tell me to even out my tan on my blog and you don’t think you’re superficial?

Wow. I’m fat. At least too fat for his liking. And it’s not even about health. It’s all about looks. Thank goodness for his honestly! I’d hate to be stuck with that forever. I promise this IM conversation is NOT taken out of context. After the last thing I said that I put up, he went on to a pitty party for himself. You don’t need to read that.

I can’t believe I didn’t see this before. Maybe I did but chose to ignore it because I loved him so much. Love is blinding, isn’t it?

Well, I’m not sleeping well. I sleep around 8 hours each night but it’s just not good sleep. It’s not that I’m continuously waking up through the night or anything, either. My friend Marie suggests Tylenol PM and Pinot Grigio to help out each night. Yeah, it might help but how much, really? Not as much as getting to the root of why I’m not sleeping well. It could be as simple as my matress needing to be flipped. My back’s been aching a lot lately. Thank goodness for the athletic trainer at school. When my back gets bad, he’ll help put the ol’ spine right back where it should be! Mom said my back was quite stiff when I saw her on Sunday, too.

I’m not saying that all the stuff going on in my life aren’t contributing to the lack of restful sleep and achy back. I’m sure that has something to do with all of this. The last week and a half has taken a major toll on my emotions and patience — two things I’ve always been proud to have built to be quite strong. Things are settling down a bit. I’ve been able to have days where I can fully concentrate on what I love to do, which is work with some amazing kids. It’s also report card time and no pass-no play is taking quite a toll on our whole staff’s nerves. I’m scared to see the report on Tuesday of exactly how many failed and can’t perform with us anymore.

I’m also worried about how hurricane Rita is going to effect the gulf coast. Don’t get me wrong, that’s not keeping me from sleeping. Now that it’s a category 5 storm, things around here are getting canceled constantly. I talked to my friend Janelle, who’s a band director in the Houston area, and she said they’ve already closed school on Thursday & Friday and canceled all activities for Saturday. I’m glad they’re being pro-active and smart about the safety of their community. This thing is going to hit our coast so hard that it might still be a category 1 hurricane when it reaches Austin. I’m glad I’m not in the early stages of that wake!! Oh, but if I were, I’d be out of there so quick the first chance I got that you’d never know I was there. I don’t need anything else this devistating in my life right now. Even if I had to wait until the last minute, I’d be packing my things and getting the cats ready to travel now so I could pick up and go when the time came. It only seems smart & logical to me.

I mean, why stay? So you can say “I survived it!”? Whatever! Okay, congratulations, dumb ass. As if “I survived it” actually means anything than you’re stupid enough to take life threatening risks when there are better ways. Then again, I also believe in learning from others’ mistakes, as well as my own. There were people who didn’t want to leave when Katrina hit Louisiana. Now, they’re dead or homeless without their familes. We’ve got 3 kids from outside of New Orleans in our band right now who thank God everyday that they had the opportunity to leave as a family when they did (which was a week after the storm hit — they “lived” in Tulane Hospital’s parking garage for about 3 days while the hospital, where they were staying because their mom worked there, was being looted). Bless their hearts, they don’t know when they can go back home again but I always see those three together and they always seem so happy that they didn’t get separated. That’s really what matters in life, right? That you have your family and friends (who might as well just be family) to celebrate life with? Can I have an Amen?

Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye ~Cole Porter

Everytime we say goodbye, I die a little,
Everytime we say goodbye, I wonder why a little,
Why the gods above me, who must be in the know.
Think so little of me, they allow you to go.
When you’re near, there’s such an air of spring about it,
I can hear a lark somewhere, begin to sing about it,
There’s no love song finer, but how strange the change from major to Minor,
Everytime we say goodbye.

When you’re near, there’s such an air of spring about it,
I can hear a lark somewhere, begin to sing about it,
There’s no love song finer, but how strange the change from major to Minor,
Everytime we say goodbye.

———————–
Wow, doesn’t this just speak appropriately right now!

Most have either heard or figured out that Len and I broke up last week. There are a lot of things that led to this decision but the straw that broke the camel’s back was that I really needed some tlc and he felt he needed to go to a football game and tailgate. It really broke my heart that I was so stressed about so many things that I was in tears more often than he’d ever seen me and his answers was for me to go find a hobby or go lay out and even out my tan. Wow, did I ever get that hint. It all boils down to the fact that he needs to figure out his path in life.

The week has been a myriad of emotions. A rollercoaster, even. Moment to moment, the emotions and feelings all change. Overall, this is what it is and I’m just going to have to keep living my life the best I can. I think I’ve been doing that okay, all things considering.

I can’t help, though, to go back over recent conversations and arguments we’ve had over the course of the year we were together and know that I saw all this coming. I don’t kick myself about seeing this coming and being so hurt by it, though. That just creates even more unneccessary frustration and besides, I did grow as a person by being with him and having him as a friend. I also don’t think that anger is one of the emotions I’ve experienced. Frustration? Hell yes! But I haven’t allowed it to lead to anger. That just becomes counter-productive. Anger is just such a wasted emotion, I can’t allow myself to bother with it. Do I get sad? Absolutely. We had a lot of wonderful times together. I miss the fact that we don’t talk everyday but that was my choice because the more I talk to him, the more possibility there is that I will kid myself that things will be okay and we might get back together. Although that door isn’t necessarily closed, it’s not my place to walk through it so soon, or maybe ever.

I really do miss having Len in my life, though. Most times, after a break up, I get sad that I’m alone and wonder if there’s someone out there for me but I’m not neccessarily, honestly missing the person I’ve broken up with. “I just miss the idea of him.” I’ve said that a time or two in my past. I don’t know about this time. Even though he may not agree with this statement, we are more alike than anyone else I’ve met. I think that I’ve spent some frustrated moment with Len here and there, the reason it’s been so easy to be patient when I get frustrated is because they are the same things I get frustrated with myself about. When he gets frustrated with me, I see him doing the same damn thing…is he really frustrated with me or himself? Through these moments of frustration, essentially with myself, I’ve been able to learn so much about how to be a better person. Better to myself and better for others.

There have been moments that I’ve had to keep very busy so I don’t have to think about how much I missed him or how frustrated I’ve gotten the last few weeks or that damn football game that he chose over coming to see me. My friends have been spectacular but it’s a wonder how many have come out of the woodwork lately. It sucks because I haven’t talked to them in a few months, they call just because, ask how things are going, how’s that wonderful boyfriend and I have to retell and relive the whole thing. It’s amazing how much the heartbreak of those conversations on Thursday & Friday hasn’t fizzled away. I guess this type of pain is not meant to ease up anytime soon.

In the end, I know everything will be fine. Hopefully, I’ll be able to talk with him again without all the emotions of this break up coming back. I really do want the best for him. Hell, why wouldn’t I?